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Jean-Luc Godard’s debut feature-length black-and-white film adopts a radically different approach to lighting and mise-en-scène compared to the exemplary black-and-white works of classic cinema, such as Welles’ ‘Othello,’ Hitchcock’s ‘Rebecca,’ or Dreyer’s ‘Day of Wrath’. These films, universally praised for the visual quality of their monochromatic worlds, showcase the mastery of their directors in understanding and manipulating black-and-white footage. By opting for a more distinctive approach, Godard challenges our ability to compare his film to the superior benchmarks etched into our cinematic memory. However, his unique style is rooted in a logic specific to his artistic and intellectual framework, making ‘Breathless’ a work worthy of both analysis and celebration in the history of cinema.
From this perspective, it becomes evident that ‘Breathless,’ whether in its use of lighting, mise-en-scène, its own distinctive monochrome footage, or more broadly in its precision, choices, and craftsmanship, stands at a considerable distance from the aforementioned classics. Those masterpieces, whose creators’ names are forever linked to concepts like diligence, mastery, and refinement, belong to a different league of timeless works. So why even compare? On one hand, we have Hitchcock, who remade ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much’ twice (1934 and 1956), and on the other, we have Jean-Luc Godard, who shot his masterpiece ‘Alphaville’ in just two weeks. When asked by Jean Youngblood (in the Los Angeles Free Press, March 1968) how he managed this miracle, Godard simply replied: I’m not that fast; others are just slow!
With this in mind, I intend to dissect some of the imagery in ‘Breathless’ from a couple of specific angles. My aim is to identify recurring patterns—unique to Godard—within its spaces and to offer a brief exploration of a few of them. These patterns, I believe, contribute to the distinct quality of the film’s visuals. Perhaps these observations will lead to some conclusions—or perhaps not.

Patterns
First, imagine the image of Michel; if that’s difficult, I’ll upload a photo of him alongside Patricia for you.

Now imagine this: Wouldn’t Michel’s image feel out of place if, instead of his checkered tie and striped shirt, he wore a tailored Stresemann suit? And instead of the ever-present cigarette dangling from his lips and the hat that served more as a playful accessory, he carried an Illinois pocket watch, checking it seriously every few minutes? Or what if, instead of the cabana-striped towel he wore at Patricia’s, he dressed like James Rennie in Archie Mayo’s ‘Illicit’, donning a shirt and bowtie under his dressing gown?

And imagine Patricia in a serious, formal dress! It would be just as absurd as dressing Joan Fontaine in Hitchcock’s ‘Rebecca’ in one of Jean Seberg’s striped shirts!

Perhaps it’s just the writer’s personal impression, but I feel that the patterns in the costumes of Godard’s film lend the characters a greater sense of intimacy, as if they are more at ease with the audience.
Of course, if this observation remains confined to the realm of simple—or even incidental—costume design, it carries no distinguishing value. After all, the costume designers of ‘Illicit’ and ‘Rebecca’, using their taste and intelligence, and in collaboration with the rest of the team, decided on how the characters in those films should dress. Similarly, the costume designer of ‘Breathless’ determined that Godard’s characters should be dressed in this particular way. Everyone has to wear something, after all!
What makes this choice stand out, however, is a nagging omission: I couldn’t recall—my position is clear—but can you recall a black-and-white film made before 1960 that uses patterns in costume and set design to such an excessive degree?

A striking correlation of patterns in Patricia’s clothing and the spatial design.

‘Breathless’ is filled with patterns. Upon closer examination of the film, the writer believes that Godard’s use of lines—or to put it another way, his approach to revealing segments of a black-and-white image through patterns—serves an aesthetic purpose, at least in this film. It is a method for the filmmaker to reveal his characters, to present them… hmm… and not merely in the ordinary sense of revealing or showing (after all, isn’t that what all films do?). Rather, it is a sharper presentation, a kind of fashion modeling, a sort of eroticism: the notion that the death of things arrives with their revelation.
And so: isn’t it the line that creates a dreamlike boundary between what is visible and what remains hidden?
Inside parentheses, let me explain this for those who may be less familiar: there have not been few detailed articles in the history of film criticism discussing the idea that the depiction of a non-nude body—one where the focus is on the indistinct lines of sexual anatomy and the unstable boundaries between clothing and the body, or, in other words, where the filmmaker’s focus is on playing with the concept of semi-nudity—has, in fact, been perceived as more provocative for audiences. And as soon as films shifted toward fully exposing bodies and eliminating this distance (the distance between what is visible and what remains hidden), the audience’s desire would diminish. Therefore, for the writer, there is no doubt that the existence of lines and boundaries stimulates human desires, and the removal of those boundaries equals death and the end of the story.
The presence of patterns in ‘Breathless’ serves as a captivating idea for rendering the body more fantastical—offering a clearer and more enchanting display of details and gestures, and providing an aesthetic invitation to voyeurism, pleasing both us and, of course, the filmmaker alongside us. A filmmaker who, by discarding conventions and distancing themselves from anything that might focus the viewer’s attention on structures, instead seeks to capture photogénic moments—even at the cost of sacrificing major narrative concerns—and to stimulate the audience’s sensitivity to something beyond traditional, formal structures. (I will later discuss how Godard seemingly breaks the fourth wall between the film and the audience, turning the film into a sexy game or a mutual exchange.)
It’s worth noting that this striped photogénie, in my view, continues in a novel and creative way the very ideas that Impressionist filmmakers spoke of decades before Godard: photogénie was meant to distinguish between viewers—those who merely watch and those who watch better.
‘Breathless’ is not explicitly an erotic film (just as Godard’s other works aren’t), and its explicitly sexual scenes amount to less than a minute in total (if they can even be described as sexual at all). But can the understated sexual elements and themes of the film truly be ignored? Are the filmmaker’s hedonistic actions, pursued through the camera and deliberately integrated into various plot elements—with identifiable motives and methods—merely a secondary and undeveloped aim?

We see a scene in the film where a girl, trying modestly to avoid directly exposing her upper body, changes her clothes with her back to the camera—but an almost nude image of the very body parts she seeks to conceal is pasted on the wardrobe door!

Of course, there’s no shortage of examples, but to provide a more precise explanation of the idea I have in mind, let’s take a different approach and avoid mentioning examples at this point in the note. Instead, I’ll begin by revisiting the first image from ‘Breathless’ that I’ve included earlier in this note (lines above) and comparing it with a still from another film (lines below). Through this comparison, I’ll attempt to explore insights within the concept of Displacement, aiming to establish a shared understanding with you. Later, I’ll return to the themes of Patterns and eroticism.
To offer a closer parallel, I’ve uploaded an image from a film produced in the same year as ‘Breathless’: Billy Wilder’s The Apartment.

Displacement
The shots we see in ‘The Apartment’ deliver a much more vibrant and dynamic visual experience compared to Godard’s ‘Breathless’—a quality shared by many other black-and-white films. The contrasts are sharper, and the surfaces and distances are rendered with a striking clarity. In contrast, Godard’s work features an image where the lighting is entirely soft, and the sense of depth is almost imperceptible. It feels as if the distances and separations between objects have merged into one another, creating a kind of two-dimensional visual continuity throughout the film. To put it simply: the black-and-white of ‘Breathless’ isn’t “black-and-white” in the conventional sense; it’s more like a pale, lifeless gray, accompanied by indistinct patches caused by overexposure (either from excessive darkness or excessive brightness).
If Godard were to record a scene where the lighting transitions from soft to either overexposed or underexposed, he would absolutely not follow the approach of someone like Billy Wilder. One could even say that Godard never spent much time meticulously working on every aspect of his film, rejecting the meticulous perspective of filmmakers like Wilder and his contemporaries. In the works of Wilder, Dreyer, and others I ‘ve mentioned, even when the lighting dims, the scene’s lines and details are conveyed to the audience with precision. But in Godard’s work, we are confronted with improvisational filming, leaning toward the cinéma vérité style popular during those years. It’s as if, for instance, an actor decided to move out of the light and let the sunlight hit the camera, and the filmmaker captured it without moving the camera, instructing the actor otherwise, or cutting the shot for any reason.
This, in my view, is praiseworthy in its own right. It reflects the creative perspective that underpins John Grierson’s imagination in defining documentary cinema and its concept: a creative engagement with reality.
In Godard’s work, when a scene is brightly lit, it is devoid of any information and is, in cinematic terms, considered overexposed. Similarly, when the scene turns dark, the darkness is not infused with the precision or nuance required, leaving the audience with an underexposed image that is entirely obscure and void of discernible details. I don’t see this as a negative aspect; in fact, I find myself connecting with it. My poetic interpretation of the filmmaker’s approach is that he feels more at ease and familiar with the Parisian sun (as opposed to, for instance, Wilder’s Paris in ‘Love in the Afternoon’). He is more at home in Parisian corridors, wandering into them instead of avoiding them, and he engages with the doors and windows that open and close to the light, as well as with the bodies that move between the light and the camera. These elements—which can also be perceived as an extension of photogénie—significantly contribute to the film’s eroticism, as I will elaborate further.
What truly matters, however, is that the sunlight in ‘Breathless’ is not meaningful simply by its presence. Rather, it generates emotion through its manipulation, its displacement, and its embrace. The sunlight creates moments where the characters, by its very existence, can wear sunglasses, drape their coats over their arms in a photographic pose, blow cigarette smoke toward it, and ultimately appear more beautiful and alluring—especially compared to the night. This sunlight, subtly stretched by the filmmaker, even stretches the night into the background: only about 10% of the film takes place at night—did you notice that? It’s as if Godard has displaced the night-shifting it out of the way-.
Even the overexposed and underexposed shots serve as deliberate disruptions, as if the filmmaker ventures into the act of breaking the frame. His characters move toward points of extreme brightness or deep darkness. In other words, through his movements—and even movements that defy the natural order—Godard crafts an image that is ambiguous and figurative.

‘Breathless’ is mesmerizing in every scene—not just visually captivating, but subtly provocative. Close-ups transform every frown, smile, playful gesture, or pose into moments of quiet allure, while medium shots elevate every form, every body, into a simple yet striking figure. The sense of freedom in the form—visible in its lighting, the fluid movement of the camera, and the natural actions of the actors—grants these bodily expressions an effortless elegance, making them feel more genuine and original, at least to me.
Contrast this with Wilder’s films, where every element is placed with mechanical precision, almost as if it were immovable (recalling Chekhov’s famous dictum: If a gun is hung on the wall, it must be fired at some point during the play). In ‘Breathless,’ however—Take another look at the first image uploaded at the top of the article—almost everything seems unnecessary. Sunglasses sit on faces even when the sunlight is mild, newspapers are carried but remain unread, cigarettes dangle from lips with barely a puff taken, a hat in one hand, a bag in the other, and a coat draped over the arm…
How many seemingly unimportant objects can you spot in a single frame? It feels less like a traditional film and more like two people picking up random things around them and strolling through the streets of Paris with a sense of freedom and an understated sensuality!

Or consider this image where Patricia, while selling newspapers, also carries her small party purse! Does this image merely possess a social quality, providing information about Parisian women of that era or culture? Or does it transform Patricia into a fashion model selling newspapers? How is it even possible to carry such a chic bag while selling newspapers!?
Finding countless photographic and magical frames of the film’s characters is not particularly difficult. But for me, the more important point is that these images are not solely dependent on themselves or on the static, staged arrangement of the film’s set designer. Instead, they are dynamic; they gain intensity and eroticism through movement and by being in motion.
This is a point I will elaborate on further.

Pay close attention to these two shots. We see Patricia wearing Michel’s men’s shirt—a detail that, at least in those years, carried an inherently provocative connotation. It embodied a certain androgynous fantasy, whether unfamiliar or old-fashioned, but one we can acknowledge as having existed then and still persisting today. (At the same time, the discussion of photogénie and the filmmaker’s deliberate move towards creating such moments remains open to us. After all, these details have no narrative logic and were not necessarily essential to be shown, yet they are there.)
The more intriguing moment comes a few seconds after the first shot. Patricia steps out of the frame, removes the men’s shirt (which the camera does not show), and then tosses it toward Michel, who puts it on. This scene not only employs an intelligent absence that invites us to imagine its unfolding (what Godard sees but the audience doesn’t) but also attaches itself to a more distant fantasy: the act of living this moment—free from the usual cinematic conventions and audience expectations—or perhaps even playing with the viewer’s desires: the swapping of clothing, uninterrupted, as if saying, “Now you wear it.”
I don’t know if it’s my own eccentricity or something else, but to me, the very act of this exchange—this transfer of a deeply personal object (the shirt)—makes the film more dynamic, more dreamlike, and more private. It evokes a sensation I am certain I had never experienced in a film made before 1960.

I’ll give another example of the filmmaker’s inclination toward such tendencies. In this particular image, Michel and Patricia, without any specific reason and entirely instinctively, first switch places (reversing their left and right positions) and then Michel places his hat on Patricia’s head.

In another scene, without cutting, the filmmaker shows the man and woman pulling the sheet over their heads—a moment that is concealed from both the filmmaker and us. I had never seen such a scene before. Moments like this are always accompanied by a cut. In what film have we seen a filmmaker keep recording the act of going under the sheet from the same angle, without interruption, and then continue from the same perspective even after they are under the sheet? Think about it: if this sequence is meant to captivate the audience, how does each method of creating that appeal define it? Cutting, zooming, darkening, spinning—what emotions do those methods convey, and what does Godard’s method convey?
For me, this method confronts the audience with a more unfiltered and intimate aesthetic—even if it’s meant to show something ugly or flawed. Within the overall approach of the film, this combination feels more evocative. It’s as if the less mechanical it is and the less robotic the behaviors and dialogues are, the closer the film comes to cinéma vérité, making it feel more real—and in this case, more sexy. In the sense that it gives us the impression of voyeuristically peeping into the private lives of real people.
In ‘Breathless’, the scenes appear real in a way that is both “artistic” and “unreal.” The result is that they feel genuine, as if we are witnessing something truly happening. The literary and narrative dimensions of the film nudge it slightly toward the imaginary, while the rest—the majority of its dimensions—lean more toward the hidden act of peeping on the boy and girl next door through the window or watching the private, intimate photographs of a couple.

Let’s examine another scene. At the beginning of the film, Michel spots two girls on the road. He speaks to himself and, indirectly, to us (just seconds earlier, Michel had addressed the camera directly). His words seem to invite the audience to scrutinize the girls, as if asking us to evaluate whether they’re worth picking up or not! Interestingly, the camera lingers on the girls, and they even look directly into the lens, as though this decision—the choice of path—is a shared one between Michel, Godard, and the audience. A game: they could have been picked up, and the story would have changed, right? The filmmaker takes this one-sided poll to its very limit.
I’m not sure if I can convey my point, but I feel that Godard, in an unexpected way, asks his audience to actively and dynamically participate in his pleasures and acts of voyeurism. He invites us to choose, to imagine, to, at one moment, take a piece of clothing off one character and place it on another—not just in our imagination, but with the filmmaker’s help, to test it out. At another moment, he leaves the narrative at its most sensitive point and, under the guise of a bartender, asks Michel for permission to kiss the hand of the beautiful woman accompanying him (minute 75). It’s strange… Are we watching a film or choosing and experiencing a series of emotions brought forth from a world that is non-literary and non-screenplay-driven?
I still don’t know if I’ve managed to communicate what I’m trying to say… From the perspective I’ve attempted to take here, Jean-Luc Godard strikes me as an audacious filmmaker—bolder even than in the more formal aspects of his work—and undeniably, a brazen one. His unfiltered and sharp candor in involving us in the provocative act of pleasure, as well as the inherently cinematic act of peeping, is something I deeply admire. These ideas are, in his work, artfully intertwined with cinema’s history and theory, with modernism and postmodernism, and even, at times, remodernism. They merge with the most common cinematic genres, such as comedy, romance, or crime, while simultaneously aligning with the most niche cinephilic tendencies, like experimental cinema and cinéma vérité.
Pleasure and candor… Michel’s line to Patricia, “Why don’t you wear a bra?” (minute 12), and Patricia’s later response, “Want me to wear a bra?” (minute 51), for me, sit somewhere between the dialogue “fixation or no fixation” between Susan and David in ‘Bringing Up Baby’ (1938) and Alvy Singer’s dialogue, “You must be getting your period” to Annie in ‘Annie Hall’ (1977). That place—that distance—is both precious and important to me.